Friday, April 2, 2010

How to Invite Ridicule

Alice C. Linsley

To understand the biblical worldview we must grasp the supplementary nature of the binary opposites. This involves understanding of what is meant by binary opposites and supplementary.

Supplementary is about meaning. It is not an egalitarian principle. That is to say that meaning is derived from the relationship of the binary opposites. I experience hateful acts as evil because I have experience of loving acts and know them to be good. The reverse is also true. The male-female relationship has meaning because of the supplementary nature of male-female.

Supplementary doesn’t mean equal, since one of the opposites is perceived as greater in some way. This is how the biblical worldview avoids dualism.

Supplementary is what makes a relationship meaningful. In fact, meaning is derived from the supplementary nature of two things.

Consider Law and Grace. St. Paul presents these as binary oppositions, and their meaning is found in the supplementary relationship of the oppositions. One is greater, stronger, brighter, etc. than the other in its attributes. Grace is superior to the Law, but makes no sense without the Law. For as St. Paul says, the Law was our "school teacher" until grace should be revealed in the Incarnate Son.

The Sun is brighter than the Moon and the Moon's light is a reflection of the Sun's light. The western Afro-Asiatics thought the Chaldeans and Babylonians were confused because they venerated the Moon. Since the Moon merely reflects the Sun's light, it is a lesser entity. Why would anyone want to venerate a lesser entity? Abraham's father was accused of being an idol worshiper (Joshua 24:2) because he lived in the region of Ur and Haran where people worshipped the moon god.

Binary distinctions are not figments of the ancient imagination. They are observed in the order of creation. Men are physically larger and stronger than women.

Among Abraham's people it was taboo to allow distinct entities to become confused. This is why both men and women were circumcised, a custom that continues in many parts of Africa. Male circumcision is seen as an enhancement of maleness and the complement to the circumcised male could only be a circumcised female. Circumcision in its original context derives meaning only when considered in this supplementary way.

Many examples of supplementary binary distinctions are found in Scripture. Consider the distinction between heat and cool. Abraham was visited “in the heat of the day” by God in 3 Persons (Gen. 18:1). Compare this to the binary opposite of “in the cool of the day”, the time of God’s visitation to Adam and Eve in Paradise (Gen. 3:8). Why are the two accounts posed as hot and cool encounters with God? Because in the first God has come to punish the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the second God has come to enjoy fellowship with the Man and the Woman.

Bible verses which forbid sowing two types of seed in the same field, weaving two types of fabric in the same garment, and boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk - are about NOT blurring the distinctions God has created in nature. The last is especially troublesome because the offspring meets death in the life-giving mother's milk.

The prohibition against mixing types, be they fibers, seeds or blood, is like the prohibition against confusing the holy with the unholy, or blurring the distinction between life and death, such as happens when a baby goat is boiled in its mother's milk (forbidden 3 places in Scripture). That is why each seed is to go to its own kind. As plants are born from the earth, so the seeds of plants return to the earth. As the man is born from the woman, so the seed/semen of man is to return to woman. The spilling of seed called 'onanism' was regarded as an evil deed, a violation of the order of creation and therefore an affront to the Creator. So obviously was homosex.

Bloods were never permitted to mix or even to be present in the same space. For example, men were not permitted in the birthing hut. Women (and many men also) were not permitted where animals were sacrificed. This is why women were never priests and why in church tradition they waited 40 days to return to church, following the ancient custom requiring purification after shedding blood.

Ancient peoples recognized a fixed order in creation. The male is larger and generally stronger than the female. The male is equipped for war and hunting while the female is equipped for cultivation and childbirth. This leads us to the distinction between the blood shed by men and the blood shed by women. Male "blood work" was expressed in hunting, war, execution of lawbreakers, and in animal sacrifice by the rulers, priests or prophets.

The blood work of women is supplementary to the blood work of men. Women sacrifice blood in first marital intercourse. They bleed in their monthly cycle and in childbirth. The blood shed of women represents life and is distinct yet supplementary to the blood shed by men in hunting, war and animal sacrifice.

I’ve found that speaking about the binary distinctions draws fire. Suggesting that they are important invites ridicule. Yet this is how the ancient Afro-Asiatics made sense of the world and their thinking informs us today through the Bible, Law and Ethics. Abraham's ancestors were not spinning an illusion that we moderns in our superior knowledge may set aside, they were describing a cross-shaped reality.

6 comments:

Georgia
said...

In Scripture, there are two kinds of circumcisions, physical and spiritual.

Of the physical, only male circumcision was directed by God and thus is Biblical and is an act of obedience. Male circumcision has functional merit; it is healthy, hygienic, and is a preventative health measure according to research. If performed properly, and on the 8th day, it will not cause significant blood flow or result in infection. The male circumcision is the only human-enacted physical circumcision and is no longer commanded in Scripture, but is still medically advisable. Male circumcision is an outward and visible sign of a spiritual truth. It symbolizes a return and restoration of humanity to the pre-fall state of living in union with God, under His good dominion/kingdom. Male circumcision entailed suffering and a willful choice to put sexual potency, passion, pleasure, progeny, prosperity, preference, appearance, identity on the line, to trust and obey God with all these. Male circumcision was also commanded as a way to restore godly masculinity and fatherhood, a valid self-sacrificing obedient spirituality/priesthood/manhood, male leadership, priesthood to live in a protective holy, committed, self-sacrificing, self-giving love that would bless and protect woman and children, not see them as property, or as targets of lust, but the kind of love that would restore and preserve society, marriage and family. It revealed God's desire to create a peculiar, singular people who could model and reveal His love, truth and life, His order, His mercy, through divine love - a beautiful, unconditional life-giving, God-revealing holy love. Circumcision of the male flesh, like baptism, is meant to be an outward and visible, physical, ceremonial sign of a spiritual invisible grace.

Female circumcision is un-biblical, extra-biblical, thus anti-biblical and unholy. It is a work of the flesh and the natural mind. No people of God have ever been directed by God to practice it. Female circumcision is anti-functional, unsafe and unhealthy, unhygienic for women and girls. It produces a kind of blood flow that is not God-ordained for women. If it was practiced by Abraham's people, it was practiced before the Abramic covenant (before the miraculous birth of the child of promise) in which God directed the circumcision of males on the eighth day and of all males converting to Judaism. When God directed Abram to circumcise the males, He could have directed female circumcision, but notably and arguably did not do so. Because human misery loves company, if God had required it, the Jewish scribes would not have left out that important detail.

There are several spiritual (internal, invisible) circumcisions mentioned in Scripture, that of the heart, eyes, lips and of the whole being. These are not made by human hands, but performed by God, only when a person is willing to submit/surrender to the will and dominion of God. These are required of both male and female....and begin and continue the process of sanctification that creates His divine character in us, outwardly and physically, a physically, emotionally, relationally healthier people.

Georgia,I don't recall reading anything in the Bible specifically discussing female circumcision, and certainly nothing forbidding it. There are a number of actions required of males, but I don't think they are forbidden to females, just not required.I definitely don't know much about anthropology, so I leave it to experts like Alice to enlighten me on local customs and practices.Angela

I'm glad the research is helpful, NIck. The essay that will post tomorrow - "Seven Planets, Seven Bowls" - will show another aspect of binary distinctions. This has to do with blessing and cursing.

Georgia, circumcision of females is never mentioned in Scripture, but that doesn't mean it wasn't done. Anything involving the female organ is handled with great delicacy in Scripture. In fact, never mentioned. Besides that, many customs of Abraham's people were lost to the Jews after Babylonian captivity, but preserved by other descendents of Abraham and continue today in the Upper Nile region, which is the point of origin of some of Abraham's ancestors.

Alice, I continue to disagree with the idea that female circumcision is God-ordained, God-inspired or God-required since it is against function and prevents pleasure neither of which are inflicted upon the male by his circumcision. And on the basis of this article that I sent you earlier: http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/06a1_incest.html

Scripture is the best we have to go by; the traditions of men are poor guides by comparison.

I do not advocate or defend circumcision of males or females. I observe these facts that support the veracity of the Biblical account of Afro-Asiatic ruler-priests spreading their binary worldview from central Africa to Nepal:

The male-female binary distinction is the basis for the circumcision of both sexes.

This binary worldview - based on objective observation of binary opposites - is traced back to the Upper Nile which included Ethiopia and eastern Sudan. The Bible refers to this region as Kush.

Circumcision of both sexes is still practiced in that part of the world.

Nimrod (Gen. 10:8) was a Kushite kingdom-builder who had moved east into Mesopotamia where he established his territory between Ninevah and Calah.

Other Kushite ruler-priests went into India and all the way to Nepal. These are called "Sudra" in that part of the word. Sudra means Sudanese.

The eastward migration of Kushites is spoken of in the Bible and verified by much evidence from linguistics, anthropology and archaeology. The phenomena of male-female circumcision is simply another example of the binary worldview that these Kushite ruler-priests spread across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.